Pro-Life Thinking

Clinton, Nathan, and Aaron are joined by Megan Almon and Jannique Stewart, also with Life Training Institute, to discuss the hard cases of rape and incest and how to talk about these issues with compassion and truth.

Jannique's CARE acronym stands for:

Common ground/Compassion

Acknowledge the suffering

Respond with logic

Establish the primary issue

Books mentioned in this podcast:

The Moral Question of Abortion by Stephen Schwartz

Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice by Francis J. Beckwith

Clinton interviews Russell DiSilvestro, a philosopher at Sacramento State University, regarding his book Human Capacities and Moral Status. They will talk about the concept of capacities, what it means to be human and have a human nature, and how all of this relates to the abortion issue.

Books mentioned on the podcast:

Human Capacities and Moral Status by Russell DiSilvestro

Human Identity and Bioethics by David DeGrazia

The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology by Eric T. Olson

Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics by J.P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae

Articles mentioned on the podcast:

"Why Abortion is Immoral" by Don Marquis

Clinton, Aaron, and Nathan discuss one of the hard cases regarding abortion: is abortion justified when the fetus is severely deformed or disabled, or won't survive long after birth?

Books mentioned in this episode:

Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice by Francis J. Beckwith

Love Unleashes Life by Stephanie Gray

The Unaborted Socrates by Peter Kreeft

Articles mentioned in this episode:

"The Infant With Anencephaly," New England Journal of Medicine, N Engl J Med 1990; 322:669-674

Clinton and Aaron talk about a philosophical argument for the pro-life position, an argument that shows that our identities remain the same through all of the changes we undergo.

You'll also notice the audio quality getting clearer. The audio quality going through Blog Talk Radio sounds a bit muffled so we've started recording our parts in Audacity to clear it up.

Clinton is joined by Stephanie Gray, an international pro-life speaker to talk about her recent book Love Unleashes Life, as well as her recent talk at Google, Abortion: From Controversy to Civility.

Books mentioned on this episode:

Love Unleashes Life by Stephanie Gray.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Persuasive Pro-Life by Trent Horn

Articles alluded to on this episode:

"On the Very Idea of Criteria for Personhood" by Timothy Chappell -- this is the article I was alluding to, in which Chappell argues that personhood isn't something to just happen to a person, but like our human development, it matures and develops over time and we need good examples of persons in our lives in order to fully flourish as persons.

Clinton and Nathan join with Patti Smith in this episode to talk about how to heal after an abortion.

Books mentioned in this episode:

I didn't mention the book, specifically, but I mentioned David Reardon. He wrote a book called Aborted Women: Silent No More. To my knowledge, despite the name of his book, he is not affiliated with the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.

Clinton, Nathan, and Aaron discuss Stephen Schwartz' SLED test, a technique to test abortion-choice claims of personhood.

Books mentioned:

The Moral Question of Abortion by Stephen Schwartz

Last week, Clinton, Nathan, and Aaron discussed the scientific evidence for the pro-life position. This week, we talk about objections that are commonly raised from people who aren't particularly knowledgeable regarding the science of embryology. Some of the objections we respond to are "An acorn is not an oak tree," "the unborn entity is just a parasite," and the burning research lab thought experiment.

Books mentioned:

Life's Work: A Moral Argument for Choice by Willie Parker

Embryo: A Defense of Human Life by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen

The Case for Life by Scott Klusendorf

The Stem Cell Epistles by Michael Buratovich

The Ethics of Abortion by Christopher Kaczor

Today I talk with Elijah Thompson of The Fetal Position podcast. We talk about his podcast, his pro-life stance grounded in his Libertarianism, then we'll have a friendly discussion over genetic enhancement.

Clinton, Aaron, and Nathan discuss the scientific facts of embryology and how we know that the unborn human being is one of us, biologically.

Sources used:

Keith Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th ed.

Ronan O'Rahilly and Fabiola Müller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001. p. 8.

Maureen Condic, Ph.D., A Scientific View of When Life Begins, On Point, Charlotte Lozier Institute, June 2014 https://lozierinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/On-Point-Scientific-View-of-When-Life-Begins-Condic-2014.pdf (accessed 6/12/17)